In "On the Housing Question" (1872)

"How is the housing question to be resolved? In contemporary society it is resolved in exactly the same way as any other social question: through gradual economic equilibration of supply and demand, and this is such a resolution as constantly engenders the question anew within itself, that is, it provides no resolution at all. How will the social revolution resolve this question—*community. —Ed.

—depends not only on the circumstances of the moment, but is also bound up with far more extensive questions, among which the abolition of the antithesis between town and country is one of the most essential. Since we do not have to construct utopian systems for the organization of future society, it would be more than idle to go into this. So much, however, is certain: that even now in the great cities there are sufficient dwelling houses on hand to, with rational utilization of the same, immediately remedy every actual «housing shortage» (italics of Engels). This can of course only happen through expropriation of the present owners, resp. through billeting their houses with homeless or with workers excessively crowded in their previous dwellings, and as soon as the proletariat has conquered political power, such a measure, dictated by the public welfare, will be just as easy to carry out as other expropriations and billetings by the present state" (p. 22, ed. 1887).

There we have it clearly—one of the functions of the dictatorship of the proletariat, one of the tasks of the state (the unification of the proletarians) in the transition epoch from capitalism to complete communism. One cannot immediately begin doing such a thing without the revolutionary use of state power.

On p. 26 note the very important remark that such questions as credit, state debts, taxes, etc., are matters of very great interest to the bourgeoisie and especially to the petty bourgeoisie, but of very little concern to workers. Taxes ultimately enter into the costs of production of labor-power: "... «State debts»! The working class knows that it did not incur them, and when it comes to power, it will leave their payment to those who incurred them" (26).